"The writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he had Been sick, and was recovered from his sickness: I said, when my days were just going to be cut off, I shall pass through the gates of the grave; I am deprived of the residue of my years! I said, I shall no more see Jehovah in the land of the living! I shall no longer behold man, with the inhabitants of the world! My habitation is taken away, and is removed from me, like a shepherd's tent: My life is cut off, as by the weaver; He will sever me from the loom; In the course of the day You will finish my web. I roared until the morning, like the lion; So did He break to pieces all my bones. Like the swallow, like the crane did I twitter; I made a moaning like the dove. My eyes fail with looking upward: O Lord, contend for me; be my surety. What shall I say? He has given me a promise, and He has performed it. Through the rest of my years will I reflect on this bitterness of my soul. For this cause shall it be declared, O Jehovah, concerning You, That You have revived my spirit; That You have restored my health, and prolonged my life. Behold my anguish is changed into ease! You have rescued my soul from perdition; Yea, You have cast behind your back all my sins. Verily the grave shall not give thanks unto You; death shall not praise You; They that go down into the pit shall not await your truth: The living, the living, he shall praise You, as I do this day; The father to the children shall make known your faithfulness. Jehovah was present to save me: therefore will we sing our songs to the harp, All the days of our life, in the house of Jehovah." (Isaiah 38:9-20)
Death is not the Gate to Life
In this writing we learn why it was that Hezekiah was so much troubled when he learned that he must die. It was because it did not mean an entrance into a larger life with greater possibilities, as some would have us believe. Death is not life, in any sense of the word. The message to Hezekiah was, "You shall die, and not live." (Isaiah 38:1)
If death had meant life under far better conditions than are possible on this earth, then we may be sure that Hezekiah, who all his life had "walked before the Lord," would not have had any objection to it. But he knew better. When the word came to him, he said, "I am deprived of the residue of my years." (Isaiah 38:10)
It was not that he was going to live in another place, under somewhat changed circumstances, much as one will go to a distant country; a man does not weep sore over that, even if the country be not quite so good as the one he is leaving. Hezekiah wept because he was not going to live anywhere any more. "I said, I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord, in the land of the living: I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world." (Isaiah 38:11)
But this could not be if at death Hezekiah were going to be with the Lord. He had learned to see the Lord in His works and ways, but now this delight was to be cut off. He could no longer behold God or man. The same thought was expressed by David, when he had been delivered from death. He said, "I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living." (Psalm 116:9)
It is a fact that "God has given to us eternal life," (1 John 5:11) so that the life that we now live, if it be by faith, is but the beginning of that which we shall live in the world to come. The future life will be but a continuation of this, so that while we live, whether in this world or that which is to come, we may walk before the Lord. At this present time we may walk in the light of His countenance, (1 John 5:11) and in the new earth His servants "shall see His face;" (Revelation 22:4) but, "In death there is no remembrance of the Lord;" (Psalm 6:5) only by the resurrection, at the coming of Christ, can the righteous dead "ever be with the Lord." (1 Thessalonians 4:17) "My age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd's tent: I have cut off like a weaver my life: He will cut me off with pining sickness: from day even to night will You make an end of me." (Isaiah 38:12)
In verse 12 Lowth has it, "My habitation is taken away," while our common version has it, "My age is departed."
The Revised Version has the same, with "habitation" in the margin as an alternative reading. The Hebrew allows both renderings, and both are in reality the same, since so long as a man lives he must live somewhere. When a man's life is taken away, his habitation is taken away; and if there is absolutely no place for him to live, it is because he has no life any more. Most vivid expressions are used to indicate the great change that death brings. "My life is cut off, as by the weaver; He will sever me from the loom; in the course of the day You will finish my web." (Isaiah 38:12,Lowth)
Life is likened to a web in the loom, the threads of which are composed of moments; Hezekiah's web was about to be cut off from the loom incomplete. An end was to be made of him. This explains the reason of his great sadness at the thought of death.
Dying in Christ
It does not, however, excuse Hezekiah's lack of resignation to the message of the Lord. Death is an enemy, and always hateful, and the fact that God himself allows one of His servants to suffer it, does not in the least make it any more attractive. But the fact that the Lord himself does allow His servants to die, and that even in death they do not suffer anything that He has not suffered, should make them resigned, and even happy, in the face of it. "The righteous has hope in his death." (Proverbs 14:32)
Christ, who died, is alive for evermore, and has the keys of death and the grave, so that, although Satan has the power of death, he can hold no one except at the pleasure of the Lord. The grave can no more hold a child of God beyond God's will than it could hold Jesus after the third day. Therefore although the grave is indeed a hateful, terrible place, no one whose life is hid with Christ in God need fear it. "You have in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for You have cast all my sins behind your back." (Isaiah 38:17)
What kind of place is the grave? It is "the pit of corruption."
That is where people go at death. The patriarch Job said, "If I wait, the grave is my house: I have made my bed in darkness. I have said to corruption, You are my father: to the worm, You are my mother, and my sister." (Job 17:13-14) "The land of darkness, and the shadow of death, [is] 22 A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness." (Job 10:21)
Yet the Christian, who knows the Lord, to whom the darkness and the light are both alike, may "fear no evil, [even in] the valley of the shadow of death." (Psalm 23:4)
The Reason for Living
We must not think that Hezekiah's prayer for deliverance from the grave was wholly selfish. No; the reason why he wished to live, and not go into the grave, is thus told by him to the Lord, "For the grave cannot praise You, death cannot celebrate You; they that go down into the pit cannot hope for your truth." (Isaiah 38:18) "The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence." (Psalm 115:17)
The psalmist also said, "I cried to You, O Lord; and unto the Lord I made my supplication. What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Shall the dust praise You? shall it declare your truth?" (Psalm 30:8-9)
Thus we see that it is not wrong to ask the Lord to keep us from the grave: much of the Psalms, which are given for our guide in the matter of prayer and praise, is composed of this very petition. Again we read, "My eye mourns because of my affliction: Lord, I have called daily upon You, I have stretched out my hands unto You. Will You show wonders unto the dead? shall the dead arise and praise You? Selah. Shall your loving kindness be declared in the grave? or your faithfulness in destruction? Shall your wonders be known in the dark? and your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?" (Psalm 88:9-12)
From this we get the facts as to the nature of the grave, and the conditions there. Who that has ever looked into an open grave cannot appreciate the description? "The living, the living he shall praise You, as I do this day." (Isaiah 38:19)
In this there is something more than a point of doctrine for us. Notice in all the scriptures that have been quoted, that the inability to praise the Lord in the grave is the reason why these faithful servants of the Lord wished to be delivered from it. The matter of praising the Lord makes all the real difference between death and life. The man who does not praise the Lord is as dead.
Idols of silver and gold, the work of men's hands, which are in every respect the farthest removed from any likeness to the God that is in the heavens working all things after the counsel of His own will, are thus described: "They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not; They have ears, but they hear not: noses have they, but they smell not; They have hands, but they handle not: feet have they, but they walk not; neither speak they through their throat. They that make them are like unto them; so is everyone that trusts in them." (Psalm 115:5-8)
That is to say, that everyone who does not trust in the Lord is like a dead piece of metal. The man who sees nothing in the world for which to praise the Lord, does not see anything, for all His works praise Him, and is the same as though he had no eyes. And he who does not speak to the praise of God is as though he had no mouth at all; and if his feet and hands do not move in the service of the Lord, then he is as though he had no life. "dead in trespasses and sins." (Ephesians 2:1)
The same Psalm that tells about the deadness of idols and of those who trust in them, tells us that "the dead praise not the Lord." (Psalm 115:17)
See a man that does not praise the Lord?--he is dead, and needs to be made alive. As surely as a man is alive he will praise the Lord. "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord." (Psalm 150:6)
Redemption from Sin and Death
One thing more must not be overlooked in reading this tribute of thanksgiving. Hezekiah said to the Lord, "You have in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for You have cast all my sins behind your back." (Isaiah 38:17)
Sin and death are inseparable. "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." (Romans 5:12) "[God] redeems our life from destruction, and heals all our diseases," (Psalm 103:4) because it is He that "forgives all our iniquities." (Psalm 103:3)
In the directions for prayer for the sick, given by the Apostle James it is said that: "The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him." (James 5:15)
Not that we are to understand by this that everybody who dies is a sinner: far from it: "the righteous is taken away from the evil to come," (Isaiah 57:1) and a blessing is pronounced upon those who die in the Lord. "And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them." (Revelation 14:13)
Yet if it were not for sin, there would be no death. We have inherited mortal bodies, and they are allowed to go into the grave; but it is the power by which sins are forgiven, and the very forgiveness itself, that insures our resurrection from the dead.
There will be a people, however, in the last days, just before the unveiled revelation of the glory of Christ in the heavens, who will represent Christ so completely that death will have no power over them, and they will be translated to heaven without seeing death. "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed." (1 Corinthians 15:51)
Therefore, "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputes not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile." (Psalm 32:1-2)--Present Truth, August 3,1899--Isaiah 38:9-20.